Weekly Insights

Here are profitability ideas for sales, marketing and customer activities. #21 – Know which of your marketing activities produce the best results Effective marketing is a combination of the right message sent to the right target customer using the right medium. Right...

These activities focus on billable hours or revenue producing hours. Customers write your paychecks. Your team members who produce your products and services are billable, i.e. revenue producing.  Here are profitability ideas for increasing billable hours.  #18 – Know...

Here are the next two ways to increase profitability. Your balance sheet tells you whether you are really profitable. Your P&L just tells you whether you are profitable for a specific period of time. The three ratios that I write about this week are called...

Here are the next two ways to increase profitability #14 – Eliminate Warehouse Supermarkets I watched a technician walk into an unlocked parts room, choose the parts he wanted, and leave with an armful. He didn’t write down what he took. He didn’t let anyone know what...

A couple of years ago I told you my story of trying to find the company that had done a phenomenal job cleaning the rug that has been in our family for more than 50 years. Initially they didn’t include any way to get in touch with them – no business card, no ongoing...

#11 – Your Monthly Productivity Ratio Your employees are key to your profitability. If they are productive, then you have a better chance of being profitable. What do I mean by productive? Their time is billable to your customers. It is not spent in sweeping the...

Last week I gave you Ruth’s Rule #2 – break even revenues needed for any overhead expense. I assume that you would like to be profitable, so here is Ruth’s Rule #3: #9 – Ruth’s Rule #3 Sales = Overhead Expense GM – Profit % Gross margin is a percentage and the profit...

Here is the next way to increase profitability. #8 – Ruth’s Rule #2 I developed Ruth’s Rules many years ago to calculate the revenues needed for any expense – whether a cost of goods sold expense or an overhead expense. Over the next three weeks I will give you...